The Bravery in the N.B.A.’s Push Against Gun Violence

In a series of powerful public-service announcements, N.B.A. players—like Stephen Curry, of the Golden State Warriors—are countering Congress’s do-nothing attitude toward gun violence.

Courtesy Everytown for Gun Safety / YouTube

As Thursday night’s G.O.P. debate reminded us, the gun lobby and its allies want every discussion of firearms in this country to be about the Second Amendment, and President Obama’s putative determination to trample on that text on his way out of office. Earlier this month, when Obama held a press conference at which he announced a few temperate executive actions to tighten background checks for gun purchasers, he said, “Now, I want to be absolutely clear at the start—and I've said this over and over again, this also becomes routine, there is a ritual about this whole thing that I have to do—I believe in the Second Amendment. It's there written on the paper. It guarantees a right to bear arms. No matter how many times people try to twist my words around—I taught constitutional law, I know a little about this, I get it. But I also believe that we can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment.” It takes a corrosive distrust, the kind that allows for no compromise or discussion across party lines, to insist that Obama actually means the precise opposite of what he has repeatedly said, but that’s what the Republican candidates are applying. As Marco Rubio put it last night, “I am convinced that if this President could confiscate every gun in America he would.”

The discussion that the gun lobby and the Republican candidates who are eager to defend it do not want to have is the one about making guns less lethal. Increasingly, and with some success, activists on the gun-control side are working to cast their goals in terms of gun safety. They do know, in fact, that they can’t confiscate guns, and so they want to work on a set of goals that seem realistic and that might make the epidemic of gun violence in this country a little less devastating. This includes reviving the idea (repeatedly thwarted by the N.R.A.) of marketing smart guns, which only fire for a recognized owner; making it harder for people with criminal records and serious mental health problems to get ahold of guns online or at guns shows; and so on. It’s a strategy that has a lot in common with what people working in public health call “harm reduction.” We didn’t outlaw cigarettes, or eliminate cars, but we have reduced the harm they cause through laws and innovations based on research, and through campaigns that changed norms.

One campaign in this spirit that seems especially promising is a series of public-service announcements launched by the N.B.A. in late December. Directed by Spike Lee, they feature N.B.A. players voicing their personal worries about American gun violence. Stephen Curry, of the Golden State Warriors, talks about being the parent of two little girls and the “unimaginable pain” of families who’ve lost children to guns. The tone is heartfelt and conversational. The focus is less on the intermittent horror of mass shootings and more on the everyday violence in neighborhoods that, as Curry says, makes it so that people “can’t just go down the street to the corner store, can’t go to the park with their families for fear of their lives.” The spots don’t mention specific gun-control measures, but they do direct viewers to the Web site of Everytown for Gun Safety, the advocacy organization funded by Michael Bloomberg, which is working on a variety of reforms. Given the reactivity of the N.R.A. and its allies, it’s brave of the players and the N.B.A. to undertake the campaign at all.

Indeed, gun-rights supporters jumped all over the ads, which also feature victims of gun violence, as soon they appeared. “You’re vilifying Americans who are scared right now, who have the right to bear arms,” Meghan McCain said. “It doesn’t help though, when it is just the President, when it’s Spike Lee, when it’s just these basketball players who, I assume every single person on there is liberal.”

What must be alarming to the gun lobby, though, is that the N.B.A. campaign and others like it have the potential to unite many Americans. In a CBS News/New York Timespoll earlier this month, fifty-seven per cent of those asked said they favored making laws on gun sales stricter. (Eighty-two per cent of Democrats, thirty-six per cent of Republicans, and fifty-three per cent of independents felt that way.) This is in keeping with the results of numerous similar polls and with a string of successes for gun-control advocates at the state level. Last year, for example, nine states passed laws preventing convicted domestic abusers from having guns. It’s at odds with the unwillingness of Congress to do anything at all about gun violence. (Most recently, Congress declined to bar people on the national terrorism watch list from purchasing guns.) And it’s at odds with the hysteria of Republican candidates who talk as though incremental measures to make us a little bit safer from gun violence are the first steps to dictatorship.

In their campaign, the N.B.A. players are pushing back against that do-nothing attitude. Carmelo Anthony, of the Knicks, says guns are too accessible and that we need “a major plan.” Joakim Noah, of the Chicago Bulls, says “the reality is there are a lot of kids around this country who feel like they have no hope. And they’re using guns at an alarming rate. That doesn’t really happen anywhere else.” Chris Paul, of the Los Angeles Clippers, observes that “once upon a time people would be stunned” by shootings. They aren’t so surprising now, and yet, Paul says, he doesn’t want them to “ever be normal.”